The Blue Mile (30 page)

Yo

‘
Y
ou go to Mrs Adams if I'm not back by six – right,' I remind Ag this morning as I'm leaving. She gives me a look as if I'm babying her. She knows to go straight to Mrs Adams if ever I'm not home when I should be, but I remind her because something in me knows. I won't be back by six today.

‘I'm sorry, lad, but we've taken it as far as we can go.' It's Mr Harrison that tells me when I get across to the shops at the end of the shift.

Mr Adams stares into the heavy planer behind me: it's out of a job too.

I knew this was coming, but it doesn't make the fact of it any easier to take. It's a hammer blow to my guts. I tried to plan for this, I tried to think ahead. There's just nothing I can do. There's nowhere for me to go. Nothing. They're only wanting qualified journeymen if they're wanting anyone at all, and returned servicemen and married men first. It's not a good time to be apprenticed to anything, not when you're my age. I've said I'll take kids' wages. Everyone's said no: the union won't have it. Fuck the union. Fuck this.

‘Something will come up, Eoghan,' Mr Adams says. Hold on, he's saying. Don't let them get to you. Well enough for him to say. He's got work at Colgate, the soap factory; they're expanding their operations and I can't get in there even to sweep the floor. Tarz and Dolly are going to Glebe Island and Clarkie's going back to the slip shops at Mort Bay, working on the steamers. How am I going to pay the rent next week? I'm already a week behind from the ten shilling pay cut last month. Sturgess will have it pounded out of me with a two by four and we'll be on the street. I've already had to let the Gaslight account go, they cut it off yesterday, and coal's that dear . . . Fuck that: how am I going to get Ag's summer uniform – she's still wearing winter's and it's getting too small for her. Fuck that: how am I going to feed us? The only dole I can get is for a single man and it's not enough. The only work I can get for the dole is on a road gang, in camps that far west they might as well be in another country, one I can't take a child to. What do I do? Cadge off Olivia – for the
rent
? Take another don't-mention-it pound from Mr Adams? ‘Keep your head on,' he tells me.

But my head is already gone.

What did I do wrong, Lord? What did I do? I just wanted to keep in work, keep a good home for me and my sister, give her a family. A life. Is it Olivia? Is that why I'm to be punished? It's you who kept sending her to me. Testing me? Haven't I passed that test? I haven't touched her but to hold her hand for more than a year.

Or is it just me? Useless, filthy O'Paddy. Should not have left Satan's arsehole. Where I belong.

‘Eoghan, where are you going?' Mr Adams yells after me.

But I'm already gone.

I go to the Rag and Famish, with every intention of getting more fucked up than I have ever been. Probably won't take much, I don't reckon, haven't had a drink for almost two years. But I am going to have several now: see you in the morning. It's half-past five in the afternoon at present, though, and I can't get near the bar. I can't see anyone in here I know, either. A fella near the door looks sideways at me, and I recognise him. I don't know his name, but I know what he is: one of them New Guard standovers, this army of broke grocers and unemployed bank clerks that have set themselves up to pick fights with unionists in the name of the King – like those fellas that stopped us in the Domain that day, only now they're getting organised: making a show of themselves in public parks, parading around with their straight-arm salutes and clicking their heels like the Girl Guides brigade they are. I see this establishment is packed with them, and there's a celebration of some kind going on.

Cheering.

I want to kill someone.

The celebrating is something to do with the elections that have gone on in Britain. The Labour Party there has gone down, in flames.

‘Lang will be next!' they're cheering.

Why? I could laugh. The Langites have just crossed the floor of the Federal Parliament to vote with the Nationalists, to bring down Labor here next. Hang your hat on that for horseshit. One fascist is as good as another to a blind man, isn't he?

‘God save the King!'

‘God smash Communism!'

‘God smash democracy!'

These ones are lunatics. Olivia reckons that the Governor is more scared of this New Guard than he is of the Bank Robber. First rule of self-preservation: you should never pick a fight with a lunatic. But there doesn't seem much left of me worth preserving right at this minute and the fella by the door is still looking at me.

I say: ‘What are you looking at, Pommy faggot?'

And then I run.

Olivia

‘
I
t all happened too quick for us,' Mrs Adams is explaining to me in the courtyard of St Augustine's. She is as daintily pretty as her husband is rough-hewn, but her face is scrunched hard now in anguish. ‘That Welfare woman came round on the Friday morning, to the school, and only because the teacher had had a bit of a worry for the child, that money might be scarce for them. She was only going to see what could be done to help, but then, by the evening, when Eoghan couldn't be found, well, there was no choice for her but to take Agnes with her.'

‘Where?' I whisper. I want to wail:
But I found you a job!
Or Velma did. The people who do something or other with the machine parts at her Eddie's shirt factory will take him on, and if that doesn't work out long-term, they've got connections at the woollen mills at Marrickville. I'm supposed to be surprising him with the news right here, right now, this Sunday.
Bring him over for coffee in the afternoon,
Velma conspired.
Mum and Aunty Karm will go crazy.

‘That will be for the court to decide,' Mr Adams says, for Mrs Adams has had to look away to dab at her tears. Over his shoulder I can see Mrs Buddle's lace headscarf bowed, just in the church doors at the end of a row of nuns, all furiously praying. Too late. ‘The hearing will be Monday morning – tomorrow.'

The hearing. As if Agnes were a criminal. She must be petrified. ‘Where is she?'

‘They wouldn't even let me see her,' Mrs Adams is openly weeping now.

‘See her where?'

Mr Adams's growl is forbidding and defeated at once: ‘In the shelter, at the court.'

In children's prison? Since Friday evening? I could cry too. But I am too shocked, and too angry – with myself. I was almost going to surprise him Thursday night with the news of the job, or the hope of it. Why didn't I? Why didn't I take the ferry over? I was trimming a raffia mid-brim with cellophane salad. What on earth for?

‘Hello, Miss Olivia,' Kenny Adams chimes in brightly, shaking my hand. ‘How do you do?'

‘Hello, Kenny,' I whisper my rage for every unjust thing.

‘It's not likely they'll let us have the child stay with us, we've already been told,' Mr Adams says, his sadness as solid as the stone beneath our feet. ‘Welfare know . . . about . . .' Kenny. Of course. Mr Adams is telling me it's not likely the court would let Agnes stay in a home that has a Kenny, with his outbursts, which, although I've never witnessed one, are apparently quite frightening, shouting and banging that can be heard up the length of their street, Eoghan has said.

Oh Eoghan. Where are you? What's happened to you?

*

Mr Jabour accompanies me, or rather I him, and we go in his brother George's sparkling new Plymouth for extra gravitas, to the Children's Court, in Albion Street, Surry Hills, a location most convenient to its purpose as it is the city's pre-eminent centre of poverty and degradation. Mr Jabour sighs heavily as he stops the motor at the kerbside, before saying, as he and Mrs Jabour, and Glor, and Aunty Karma have all said to me a hundred times since midday yesterday: ‘You should have said something before this.'

Yes. And so should Eoghan. How could he not have told me he'd got behind with the rent? The whole of Balmain knew, behind his back at least. Agnes's lunch tin packed with only bread and dripping these past few months, since the last cut in his hours, which I also had no idea about. No idea things had got so desperate for him. I love a bit of bread and dripping but not every day. Mrs Hanrahan sneaking an extra apple for Agnes into Gladdy's tin, not wanting to hurt his pride. What good is pride to us now? There should be a law against people concealing difficulties. Gloria almost had a heart attack and her baby at once:
That little girl? That little girl is WHERE? She's WHAT?

Beyond the liver-brick edifice, the interior is dank and dark as a crypt, sending shiver after shiver through me. Poor Agnes, being hauled in here alone, to this place haunted by the worst of our inhumanity: that which we inflict upon the helpless.

Mr Jabour is not so affected. He bowls directly up to the desk in the foyer: ‘Good morning, I am here for Agnes O'Keenan.'

‘Sir?' the man at the desk looks up from some paperwork. ‘The court proceedings begin at ten o'clock.' He glances over his shoulder at the wall clock: it's a quarter to nine.

Mr Jabour waves his genie hand as if this were all a nuisance: ‘The girl, Agnes O'Keenan, I am here to adopt her.'

Because that's how seriously Mr Jabour takes his fatherly responsibilities.

The man at the desk is naturally a little startled. He says: ‘Er . . .'

Mr Jabour is a busy man: ‘Where is the child?'

‘Ahhh . . .' the man shuffles the papers until he finds the answer. ‘Yes, here she is. O'Keenan. In the shelter – she'll be brought up any minute now.'

Brought up? I imagine from some mouldy rat-infested cell.

My heart thuds in time with the ticking of the wall clock. These are the most interminable minutes of my life. The man has gone back to his paper-shuffling. How can he do that when Agnes is – Please God, if she's been beaten, I shall sue for cruelty. I shall cable Bart and have the best barrister in this city send the whole of the Welfare Department to prison.

There's a shuffle of footsteps up a side hall and as I turn a small voice calls out: ‘Miss Olivia?'

My little curly-topped dear. Oh! In the midst of half-a-dozen others, poor urchins, being filed in through another set of doors.

She breaks from the line and runs to me, too quick for the matron with them, and she dives into my arms. She's still in her school uniform; plaits askew but ribbons perfectly tied. She doesn't say another word; she only sobs, almost noiselessly, trembling, right into my heart.

I hold her dear little head to my heart and I tell her, as if I could tell them all: ‘I'm so sorry, poppet. I'm so sorry. I'll never let you go again.'

*

I have to let her go, though, while the Welfare officer, a Mrs Merridale, takes her back to the shelter to retrieve her bag and coat, and to wait there while the paperwork is sorted out. Mrs Merridale is so helpful and almost as relieved as I am; she says: ‘I'm so very glad it was me who went to the school on Friday.' Suggesting things might have worked out very differently otherwise. ‘Agnes and I are old friends, aren't we?' She smiles, a gentle smile under a stern grey fringe; and I return the smile that Agnes can't. ‘Come along,' the Welfare lady says, and Agnes looks so fearful at the idea it's a crime in itself.

‘It's all right,' I promise her. ‘I'll be here when you return. Right here, in this foyer.'

‘Shall we say twelve o'clock on the dot?' Mrs Merridale promises too, and then she assures me: ‘We should have sorted out all our particulars by then.'

I suspect she wants a few hours to satisfy herself that Mr Jabour is indeed the fabulous agent of rescue he appears to be before informing the magistrate, and I'm glad about that. That she cares.

Meanwhile, the legal particulars on our side are sorted out in about two minutes. The clerk shuffles some more papers, stamps one and scribbles on another, before explaining that while Agnes can't be adopted straightaway by the Jabours, they can foster her through the Children's Relief Department, a process which appears to me to be so easy anyone in want of children could walk in and pick up half-a-dozen. Obviously not too many are. Every children's home in the state is full to overflowing. And while it appears that the state cannot risk Agnes going into a home with a mentally handicapped child in it, it is perfectly acceptable that she be whisked away by a complete but obviously wealthy stranger just now charged in off the street. The only question is:

‘The current status of the child – it must be officially recorded,' the clerk says, his nib hovering over the form. ‘If the child is orphaned or abandoned, then it will be a simple matter for you as legal guardian to adopt it later. If it's in need of temporary custody only, then that's another matter altogether. It'll have to be investigated in due course for verification, but you'd be better off saying abandoned, so that the past family can then have no claim on it.'

No claim on
it
? What is a child? Not a person. A piece of property. No, less than that – there's not even a solicitor here to witness the transaction. Mr Jabour looks at me with the only relevant question, and I pray as I never have: ‘Temporary. Of course it's only temporary.'

‘Temporary,' Mr Jabour confirms and then signs the bottom of the form. Agnes is safely in our protection, or will be at midday, with magisterial approval, please Mrs Merridale. Then he looks at his pocket watch – ten past ten – and he looks to me: ‘Chippendale. You said this boy of yours grew up in Chippendale?'

‘Yes.' I said that on the way here, glancing down a side street and not wanting to see what was down there at all. Not wanting to see these slum lands.

‘Do you know what street?' Mr Jabour asks me now.

And I do know. ‘Myrtle Street.' I remember it immediately because he made a joke of it one afternoon, the streets and the pubs around where he lived being named after trees – Pine, Oak, Rose, Myrtle – and not a single tree alive in any of them. But it can only be by some other power that I remember the number of the house: ‘One hundred and twenty-two.' The dance in the number; the way he says hundred:
hondred.

‘Stay here, Olivia, I shall make some enquiries there.'

‘Not without me,' I tell him. I have to look now. I have to see where this mess began.

*

One hundred and twenty-two Myrtle Street is not a place fit for human habitation. The worst house there, was all that Eoghan said, and it's no exaggeration, not now I'm looking at it. It's the only weatherboard in this part of the street, wedged between two rows of blank-faced terraces, and there appear to be more and straighter boards across the front window than there are on the house itself. The transom above the door is smashed, but unboarded, and the right-hand edge of the awning, minus its verandah post, is on the verge of collapsing onto what remains of the fence. The idea that someone claims rent on this property is about as close to evil as I want to get. It smells of something evil here too: a broken sewage pipe?

The street is empty – soulless – but I prickle all over as if a hundred eyes watched the motorcar crawl past. Watching us now. I don't need to be told to stay in the motorcar while Mr Jabour knocks at the door. While I pray that Eoghan is here, and pray that he's not.

The door opens. It's a woman. Pinch-faced, lines down her cheeks, but she's not an old woman; a baby on her hip, another at her skirt. She looks so tired and careworn she might give one of them to Mr Jabour if he stands on the doorstep for long enough. She's shaking her head: Eoghan's not there. Thank God. I hear her say: ‘Nah. O'Keenans was here. The old woman, Kath, she's gone but. She died. Grog got her. She come out of prison back in, orrr, middle of winter it was, and it got her real quick. The old man – dunno where he went. Be round somewhere.'

Round somewhere.
Rage rushes through me at that
.
These men, who just walk off, leaving trails of destruction behind them. One difference between Eoghan's father and mine, and one difference alone: real estate. This is a medusa rage: I would turn them to stone and smash them.

If it weren't for the wave of pity now smashing over me. Into me. For Eoghan.

Oh, Eoghan. Where are you?

‘We will find him,' Mr Jabour promises. ‘It is good that he is not here at least.'

I nod. And cover my mouth as I begin to gag: ‘That smell – Oh God, it's putrid.'

‘It's the brewery,' Mr Jabour sighs, as if that might account for everything. Perhaps it does.

*

I take Agnes back to Lavender Bay, just the two of us, as it's quiet here and she knows my house as well as her own. It would be too much for her to meet Mrs Jabour and Aunty Karma today; save that great wave of nourishment for another day. She still hasn't spoken a word, and I won't try to push her to. We cuddle on the sofa. She stares into a magazine, into a drawing of Jean Patou's latest evening whimsy, of bias-cut satin flutes and angel wings.

I promise her: ‘We'll find him. We'll find Yoey.'

She stares and I make her bacon rissoles. She has half a mouthful before falling asleep with her head on my lap and then I tuck her into my bed and I write to Mother, not of any of this. I tell her simply that I love her, for all that she has done for me. Her faults disappear inside this night, inside this sadness for all those less fortunate, as I tell my mother how much I appreciate her fortitude and all her care in raising me: all alone. Her selfishness was never without some purpose, some thought for me – for some future for me. As Agnes sleeps on, I make my sister a funny little doll from scraps, a mop of turquoise boucle for hair. I have a baby sister. Her name is Sophia. For the first time I dream of meeting her. I shall, one day.

I shall see Eoghan again sooner.

Please.

Be found. Be safe.

Come home.

Be alive, be around somewhere, so I might hate you for being a horrible fool.

Please.

It's so quiet I can hear the ferry bell dingling at the wharf. So quiet I can hear the harbour sigh.